Andy Fickman, the director of the movie, has a history in theater and screenwriting. The first movie he directed was a teen sex comedy called Who’s Your Daddy? before he directed the musical Reefer Madness.
She's the Man is loosely based on Twelfth Night, one of William Shakespeare's comedic plays. In the play, Viola and Sebastian are twins, separated by a shipwreck. Viola, believing her brother to be dead, disguises herself as a man ("Cesario") and enters the service of Duke Orsino. She falls in love with the Duke, who in turns is in love with Olivia. These are all similar traits to the movie, except that Viola disguises herself as her brother in the movie. Both the play and the movie are comedic. The obvious differences are, of course, that the movie is set in the modern world, and more specifically in an American high school. The play, on the other hand, is set in "Illyria," an ancient name for the region now covered by the Western Balkans.
